North Woods

A Novel

Taschenbuch
384 Seiten; 25 BLACK-&-WHITE PHOTOS; 26 mm x 156 mm
Sprache English
INT
2023 Penguin Random House; Random House
ISBN 978-0-593-73062-1

Besprechung

Dazzling . . . a brave and original book, which invents its own form. It is both intimate and epic, playful and serious. To read it is to travel to the limits of what the novel can do. The Guardian (US)

A time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic . . . Each chapter germinates its own form while sending out tendrils that entwine beneath the surface of the novel . . . As [Mason] floats through thrillers, a bit of comic noir, erotic paranormal fiction and other genres, it s hard to imagine there is anything he can t do . . . The Washington Post

Gorgeous . . . a tale of ephemerality and succession, of the way time accrues in layers, like sedimentary soil. NPR

Brilliantly combines the granularity of realism with the timeless, shimmering allure of myth . . . Sui generis fiction . . . The forest and the trees: Mason keeps both in clear view in his eccentric and exhilarating novel. The New York Times Book Review

It seems almost a magic trick, the way in which Mason knits his lives into a single tale. Erica Wagner, The Sunday Times

A treatise on forest management (and mismanagement), a hallucinatory dream sequence, and an anthropologist s life s work all rolled into one. North Woods fires on all cylinders by engaging all the senses as it transports readers through history. San Francisco Chronicle

A tender lament for our vanishing earthly paradise. . . . it s hard not to come away feeling a bit wistful, seeing what we ve lost and imagining what lies ahead in our probably dystopian future. The Boston Globe

Enthralling . . . the bigger point of North Woods is how much is forgotten or never known. This resonates at a time when Americans are arguing about what version of history students should be taught. The Economist

This is . . . a cunningly contrived and beautifully intricate book . . . The Scotsman

[A] magisterial mosaic . . . Truly triumphant. Booklist, Starred Review

It s a dazzling high-wire act and it s thrilling to read . . . There are a lot of great books coming out this fall but, if I were you, I d start with this one. The Star Tribune

North Woods is a monumental achievement of polyphony and humanity . . . I loved it. Maggie O Farrell, New York Times bestselling author of Hamnet

North Woods is the most original and spellbinding novel I ve read in ages. Mason makes bramble, brush, and orchard come alive with the spirits of their unforgettable former inhabitants. Their lives . . . had me glued to my seat. Abraham Verghese, New York Times bestselling author of The Covenant of Water

Ambitious, alive, and lush . . . I emerged from this book as though from an enchanted forest, covered in leaves and changed by what I had seen there. . . . Electrifying. Tess Gunty, author of The Rabbit Hutch

North Woods is a sui generis work of pure brilliance, an epic written with a miniaturist s precision. Daniel Mason has unearthed . . . a universal story of loss and reclamation. It s the best book I ve read in ages. Anthony Marra, author of Mercury Pictures Presents

Mason depicts all of [the] stories with sympathy, sensitivity, and affectionate humor. Epic in scope and ambitious in style, this book succeeds on all counts. Highly recommended. Library Journal (starred review)

Readers, too, will find themselves in an entrancing fictional realm . . . Like the house at its center, a book that is multitudinous and magical. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Each arc is beautifully, heartbreakingly conveyed, stitching together subtle connections across time. This astonishes. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

North Woods is a love poem to the human and natural history of Western Massachusetts . . . wise, profound, chilling, carnal and funny. BookPage

Textauszug
Zusatzinfos
Verfasser:in
Schlagworte

Textauszug

One

They had come to the spot in the freshness of June, chased from the village by its people, threading deer path through the forest, the valleys, the fern groves, and the quaking bogs.

Fast they ran! Steam rose from the fens and meadows. Bramble tore at their clothing, shredding it to rags that hung about their shoulders. They crashed through thickets, hid in tree hollows and bear caves, rattling sticks before they slipped inside. They fled as if it were a child s game, as if they had made off with plunder. My plunder, he whispered, as he touched her lips.

They laughed with the glee of it. They could not be found! Solemn men marched past them with harquebuses cocked in their elbows, peered into the undergrowth, stuffed greasy pinches of tobacco into their pipes. The world had closed over them. Gone was England, gone the Colony. They were Nature s wards now, he told her, they had crossed into a Realm. Lying beneath him in the litter, in the low hollow of an oak, she arced her head to watch the belted boots and leather scabbards swinging across the wormy ceiling of the world. So close! she thought, biting his hand to stifle her joy. Entwined, they watched the stalking dogs and met their eyes, saw recognition cross their dog-faces, the conspiring shiver of their tails as they continued on.

They ran. In open fields, they hid within the shadows of the bird flocks, in the rivers below the silvery ceiling of the fish. Their soles peeled from their shoes. They bound them with their rags, with bark, then lost them in the sucking fens. Barefoot they ran through the forest, and in the sheltered, sappy bowers, when they thought they were alone, he drew splinters from her feet. They were young and they could run for hours, and June had blessed them with her berries, her untended farmer s carts. They paused to eat, to sleep, to steal, to roll in the rustling meadows of goldenrod. In hidden ponds, he lifted her dripping from the water, set her on the mossy stone, and kissed the river streaming from her tresses and her legs.

Did he know where he was going, she asked him, pulling him to her, tasting his mouth, and always he answered, Away! North they went, to the north woods and then toward sun-fall, trespassing like fire, but the mountains bent their course and the bogs detained them, and after a week they could have been anywhere. Did it matter? Rivers carried them off and settled them on distant, sun-warmed banks. The bramble parted, closed behind them. In the cataracts, she felt the spring melt pounding her shoulders, watched him picking his way over the streambed, hunting creekfish with his hands. And he was waiting for her, winged in a damp blanket which he wrapped around her, lowering her to the earth.

They had met in, of all places, church. She had known of him, been warned of him, heard that he stirred up trouble back in England, had joined the ships only to escape. Fled Plymouth, fled New Haven, to settle in a hut on Springfield s edge. They said he was ungodly, consorted with heathens, disappeared into the woods to join in savage ritual. Twice she d seen him watching her; once she met him on the road. This was all, but this was all she needed. She felt that she had sprung from him. He watched her through the sermon, and she felt her neck grow warm beneath his gaze. Outside, he asked her to meet him in the meadow, and in the meadow, he asked her to meet him by the river s bank. She was to be married to John Stone, a minister of twice her age, whose first wife had died with child. Died beaten with child, her sister told her, died from her wounds. On the shore, beneath the watch of egrets, her lover wrapped his fingers into hers, made promises, rolled his grass sprig with his tongue. She d been there seven years. They left that night, a comet lighting the heavens in the direction of their flight.

From a midwife s gar

Langtext

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR

A WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.

With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders. San Francisco Chronicle

New York Times Book Review Editors Choice A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Boston Globe, NPR, Chicago Public Library, The Star Tribune, The Economist, The Christian Science Monitor, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Bookreporter

When two young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to growing apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths an ancient mass grave only to discover that the earth refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister con man, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle: As the inhabitants confront the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

This magisterial and highly inventive novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason brims with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature, and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we re connected to our environment, to history, and to one another. It is not just an unforgettable novel about secrets and destinies, but a way of looking at the world that asks the timeless question: How do we live on, even after we re gone?

Biografische Anmerkung zu den Verfassern

Daniel Mason is the author of The Piano Tuner, A Far Country, The Winter Soldier, and A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages, adapted for opera and the stage, and awarded, among others, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a California Book Award, an O. Henry Prize, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is an assistant professor in the Stanford University department of psychiatry.